


the devil went down to georgia

by EverybodyKnowsIt



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Both Jeonghan and Seungkwan have long hair, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Prophet AU, So... a lot of religious iconography, Southern Gothic, This fic is the only good thing that came out of catholic school, bc it's a vibe and bc here my word is law, this is all.. extant decay and blacklung rot and wild marshland and hiding in a Waffle House at 1am, you know. a regular tuesday.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25503754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverybodyKnowsIt/pseuds/EverybodyKnowsIt
Summary: Seungkwan finds bones in the woods and sees eyes staring out at him from beyond the salt marshes. He finds piles of shriveled locusts under the shade of blooming peach trees and the shriek of angel-song in his sleep. Sometimes he'll go for a walk so deep in the wilds he don't see nothin' except for the end of the world, and something that may have once been a deer. May have never been a deer.Seungkwan is Prophet. Reclaimer. Revelator. But most of all, he is a boy with a heavy burden. Most of all, he is in love with Vernon.
Relationships: Boo Seungkwan/Chwe Hansol | Vernon
Comments: 17
Kudos: 29





	1. came up from the cracked earth

Boo Seungkwan is not a seventh son of a seventh son. He does not have the plagues of Moses or the conquests of Muhammad or the following of the golden child of Nazareth. He is not blessed with wisdom or beauty beyond compare, or as Jeonghan likes to point out, even _an iota of God given common sense._

_Don’t worry,_ he always says, smile pulling on the edges of his mouth as he knocks his knee against his brother’s. _God gave me other things._

And _oh,_ how He did. Because Seungkwan is not Moses or Muhammad or Jesus, but he has the sight, _the revelation,_ Mama used to say. Seungkwan knows that he has nothing, knew it from the age of ten years old when his teacher asked for him after class and said _son, if you wanna go to the city you’re gonna need a permission slip with your daddy’s John Hancock and a whole ten dollars._ When Seungkwan had to say _thank you sir, but we don’ have that to spare._ When he learned shame. 

Seungkwan has nothing except for the little house by the river in which he lived with his family and the swallows that coo at him from the garden, and yet, God comes to him. As he sleeps, nested under the blanket next to Jeonghan, he watched Him walk across the dreamscape, towards him. Swathed in heaven-fog and living warmth and the soft crunch of bread and bone, his god cups his face in His tender hands. He decrees, _You are the boy I choose to be my tongue._

God fills his mouth like clove oil, just a simple sense of _burning_ and _complete,_ and he wakes chanting _maranatha, maranatha, our lord comes, our lord comes--_

It scares the dickens out of Jeonghan, so much he rolls straight outta of bed and hits the cold floor, but when he sees Seungkwan in tears at the enormity, the heaviness, that he will now carry for the rest of his days, he doesn’t yell. He bundles Seungkwan up in his skinny arms and says _calm down, calm down before you wake the devil himself,_ and he makes Seungkwan a cup of chamomile tea. He wakes the next morning, to his father listening to the news crackling over their old radio as he stirs his tea and Mama boiling fat, round huckleberries into jam.

Jeonghan stares at him with narrowed eyes from where he sits across from their father, buttering his toast with the grinning glimmer of mischief he’s perfected over fifteen years life on this earth. _Seungkwan’s been having visions,_ he says, eyes beaming curious and cheeks bulging like a squirrel as he stuffs bread in his mouth. _His eyes ‘bout near rolled into the back of his head, speakin’ some language I’ve never heard._

 _And you have butter on your nose,_ their father remarked, taking another sip of his tea. _What else is new._ He rolls his neck and Seungkwan cringes at the _pop pop pop_ of each vertebrae stretching. 

He hears Mama’s tinkling laugh from the kitchen, black braid trailing after her as she comes to kiss them good morning-- one wet smack on the side of the cheek each. She ruffles Seungkwan’s hair, fluffing out around his cheeks already, and she looks down at him with warmth suffusing her handsome black eyes. _I knew you were gonna be somethin’,_ she tells Seungkwan, hand cool and soft on his cheek. _I knew it, soon as I could feel you in my belly, and I read it in the tarot too._

And that’s that. Pop kisses Mama three times, twice on the cheek and once on the lips, before he grabs his tools and walks out the door to work. It’s quick work then, pulling on shoes and sweaters and putting books into tattered old Jansport backpacks. Mama shoos them out the door, one hug each-- Seungkwan breathes it in deep, the scent of hay, old roses and burning sage. Musky cloves and deep, golden amber. Jeonghan, who thinks he’s too old for something as sappy as hugs, tries to duck out the door, but Mama catches him and gets her claws into him anyway-- blowing a raspberry into his cheek as Jeonghan shrieks in the background, Seungkwan laughing all the while. They make their way, sticky hand in sticky hand, down the path to the main road three miles away, to where the rusted old bus is going to come pick them up and bring them to town for school.

From then on, the way light rests in the burn of stars-- that’s how God rests in his teeth, in his gut, all the way down to his toes.

It’s not just shaking hands and bloody mouth, not just cramps deep in the gut or blind eyes or burning with fever from heaven’s glow. It’s a knowledge he doesn’t remember learning. A laughter that someone else puts in his mouth. He tells Mama and Pop and Jeonghan about the things he sees, but only when they’re good, when they’re something sweet, something helpful. When the harvest will come and reach through the garden and ripen the apricots. When the rain will come too hard and too fast and the river will flood and ache with it, and they have to make sure the chickens are penned up safe in the coop. Where to find the soapwort blooms Mama uses in her tinctures.

There are other times, when his sight dissolves into blood and ichor, that he doesn’t speak of at all. His dreams shift to fire and there are images, slow and strange, of great men dying and cities falling into the sea. God’s wrath swarming into locusts and spilling as the people’s blood on the marble.

When this happens he cries, even though he doesn't mean to-- his mouth snaps shut with the trembling fear of a future he cannot begin to understand, but he weeps it out anyway. When this happens, Pop will sing him that tune about Barton Hollow that his daddy sang to him when he was young and afraid of the thunder. Mama makes him a tonic that pulls him into a dreamless sleep, so that he can rest without holy visions of scarlet sand and angels with sickle teeth. Jeonghan pulls him close, calls him a crybaby, but tucks Seungkwan's head into his neck as he says it.

The preacher at Sunday school talks about what it will be like when they all meet the angels, soft bird-down tunics and gentle eyes and a golden halo of molten gold. But Michael has wings of barbed wire and a starfire halo so bright it would blind any other. Everytime he visits, his thunder-clap voice cracks his bedroom mirror.

 _(Ming Hao,_ he says, rolling six blind eyes to the back of his head. _My name is Ming Hao, they never got that right in the stories._ The water glass besides Seungkwan’s bed shatters as he speaks.)

Years pass this way. Three short, lovely years written not by the divinity that stains Seungkwan's fingers and mouth like a pomegranate, but by the rest: the kitchen table littered with dried lavender sprigs and sheet music for the half-tuned piano in the corner. Him and Jeonghan, kneeling in the autumn brush and plucking the blackberries away from the thorns, singing even as their hands redden with fruit and pinpricks of blood. Late at night sitting on his mother's knee as she brushes and braids his hair and his father stokes the living room fire.

God's holiness burns within him as a fever that has never been broken. When he wakes up in the town square covered in thorns and red-clay, screaming of prophecy and tempests, they call him crazy. Slow. Wrong in the head. But then the hurricane hit and they called him proclaimer. But to his family, he was just brother, just son.

The day Mama dies, the sky turns all rain. 

During these days he speaks for God who splinters iron, melts stones, cracks the sea in half. For God who sings like pest and plague. For God who burns like gold and grief.

He stands there, in his only pair of black slacks with Jeonghan at his side, crumbling. Rotting like the run-down shacks on the outskirts of town, overgrown with weeds and held together only by prayer. He gnashes his teeth at anyone who gets close, grabs the rosary that hangs above his bed and throws it at the wall and watches it snap and shatter, beads scattering across the floor. He cries. He clutches Jeonghan, who is silent and hollow in his grief, and he cries until he can't. When he can't find anymore tears, they sit, together, watching the pine warblers nest until the sun sets and the moths flutter around the lamplight.

Pop passes a week later, and it's Jeonghan who finds him. Him and Mama used to joke that soulmates only came 'round once in a blue century, and that one can't live on the earth too long without the other. Grief curls its way through his veins and takes him over, it swallows him whole and spits him out, and it will not leave him quietly. It nestles along with divinity in his chest like aching; like fire.

His are rattled, aching bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come check out my [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0AqbtXMp8q3esOXNF3PYxA?si=wr9hdTNxQ16ZiLh9HBH3Xw) for this fic!!! 
> 
> if you only listen to one song, make it Sleeping on the Blacktop-- the vibe im going for here encapsulated in three minutes


	2. a real piece of calico

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seungkwan meets a boy and takes a liking to him. Likes him so much he doesn't want him to end up as one of those bog mummies.

Seungkwan’s dozing by the river, fishing pole dipping sluggishly with the tide and cherry cola going warm in his slack hand, when he’s kicked hard in the side. He sits up with a cough, sharp pain blooming down his ribs. 

“Christ-- What the fuck--” He vaguely hears the splash of something falling into the river and registers cold liquid spilling over his lap. Now lacking a fishing pole, a coke and a clean pair of pants, he looks up to give a good piece of his mind and big, big eyes are staring back. 

It’s a boy, Seungkwan notes, or something very good at pretending to be a boy. You never do know, with what you see around here, or what the dark-eyed creatures hiding in the poplars want you to see. He’s pretty though, like the mirages often are. Pale, thin-lipped and gold-flecked. Like one of those old Klimt paintings, but real and here and blushing something awful fierce.

His cheeks are so, so red. “Sorry,” he mumbles, so quiet Seungkwan can barely hear him, looking down at his feet and kicking a river rock with one beat-up sneaker. 

Seungkwan cocks his head at this, brushes invisible dust off his jeans as he stands up-- a mistake considering the front of him is still wet and stained dark with coke. “No harm I guess,” he drawls, and he steps closer. They don’t often get newcomers, the town too small and run-down for tourists and the wilds too damp and thick for outdoorsmen to come down from the North. “But ya’ owe me a coke,” he adds, just to see the stranger squirm a little more.

There is something awful familiar about him, and Seungkwan squints through hazy dappled light and dust motes as he tries to figure out just what.

This seems to set the stranger even more on guard, and the flush has spread down his cheeks to his neck, unlike any crimsmon pyre Seungkwan has ever seen in any vision. It’s pretty, real lovely in a way that makes you want to see how far down he’ll blush. He shivers, just a bit, and pushes the thought away. “Sorry,” the boy repeats. He looks up again with those wide eyes, cheekbones high and mouth set. “I’ll buy you another one,” he says, completely serious, and it makes Seungkwan laugh.

“Don’t worry your pretty head about it,” he says, and he takes one more step closer, bare feet crunching over parched-gold river grass. “Do you have a name?”

“A name...” The boy murmurs absently, eyes rolling down Seungkwan’s frame as he comes closer. “You’re not wearing a shirt,” he says, and if it weren’t for the deer in headlights look that he’s worn for the entire time Seungkwan’s seen him, he’d say it was an admonishment.

“As people often do, for July in Georgia,” he answers, noncommittal but curious. Sure, he’s no Kim-Mingyu-captain-o’-the-football-team kinda built, but he’s not horribly deformed either, he doesn’t think. Soft around the edges, maybe, but strong, deceptively so, from the walking and the swimming and the pushing of Hoshi into the river every muggy Saturday. “I’m Seungkwan,” he offers, in the hope of putting the poor thing at ease.

“Hansol,” the boy says, and he seems to find his footing. “My name is Hansol and I’m sorry I stepped on you, really.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, mud-green cargo pants that Seungkwan reckons are so fashionable they circle around to ugly again. “I’m just lost and trying to find my way to--”

“--The Chwe Manor,” Seungkwan finishes with him.

The boys eyes bug out of his head so far Seungkwan is afraid they might fall out, and he thinks he hasn’t had this much fun since he convinced Dokyeom that the Pope was a lizard. “How did you know that,” he says, mouth parted in what might be awe or suspicion. What is probably both.

 _Outsiders,_ he thinks rather fondly, _always so suspicious. If only they knew._

Seungkwan looks up from where he stands ankle deep in the shallows of the river, fetching his fishing pole from where it got stuck in thick red mud and pebble, tiny silver bluegills swarming around the imprints his feet leave in the silt. He hums, “Well, either you're tryna’ find the manor,” he says, giving the pole a tug, to no avail. “Which is the only thing south a’ here. Or else you’re tryna’ walk the fifty miles to Atlanta.” He stares, narrow-eyed and mouth pursed, at the reed pole stuck deep in river clay, already trying to figure out how to tell Jeonghan he lost another one. _I’m done for,_ he bemoans, _he’s really gonna twist himself silly over this one._

“I don’t think I could make it to Atlanta,” and the voice is so close to his ear he jumps.

 _“Jesus--”_ he near swears again until a cool, soft hand grabs him by the elbow to steady him. 

“Sorry,” Hansol says again, a hair’s breadth behind him, and he’d be getting an elbow to the face if he didn’t sound so much like he meant it “You look like you needed help.” Seungkwan stares resolutely ahead. He can hear the bluegills laughing at him from the silt, the catfish shaking their whiskers and chuckling, and he absolutely does not respond. _He doesn’t think you’re crazy yet,_ Seungkwan warns himself, _and you won’t ruin that by fixin’ to give the fish a talkin’ to._

“Thanks,” he mumbles, as Hansol steps from behind him to grab his fishing pole with both hands. He’s only about an inch taller than Seungkwan, if that, but he’s broader in the shoulders. Aristocratic cheekbones and big, deft hands. The lean muscles along his arms flex as he tugs on the reed pole, and after a few tries, he pulls it from the river.

Seungkwan is suddenly glad that by this late in the summer, he’s sun-darkened enough that it’s hard to see the blood rush to his face. The patch of tan skin where Hansol touched him has broken into goose-pimples, each hair standing on end.

“Here you go,” Hansol says awkwardly, holding out the fishing pole to Seungkwan. Their fingers brush as he reaches for it, and Seungkwan tries to suppress the thorn of dissapointment as Hansol flinches away. 

Seungkwan steps away, to regain some distance and regain some dignity. “If you’re lookin’ for the manor,” he starts, hugging the fishing pole close to his body, wishing for the first time in a blue moon that he was wearing more clothes. "You just gotta follow the river.”

Hansol is staring. Or rather he was staring since they met, but now Seungkwan knows what his touch feels like and his gaze makes him feel a lil’ crazy, shaky in the legs. Seungkwan looks away, at the patch of bright purple bachelor’s button to the left of the two of them. It too, is laughing at him. Seungkwan ignores this. “Take a right when you reach the white hickory with scratches in the trunk, you’ll know it when you see it.”

He pauses. Saying anything more might scare Hansol off, and from what Seungkwan can see, he already spooks easy. But Hansol scuffs his sneakers against the red dirt, smiles for the first time Seunkwan has seen, gummy and wide, and Seungkwan feels all his worries melt, into something gooey and gold like honey at the root of his spine. 

Seungkwan doesn’t know Hansol, not really, but he’s handsome, old-world handsome like the prince of some forgotten land, and he looks sweeter than hymns and rosewater. “If you see any strange children,” Seungkwan starts slowly. “Don’t speak to them. Not even a little _hello._ ” Hansol is looking at him curiously, but he doesn’t look afraid, so Seungkwan continues. “You’ll be safe if you just pretend not to see them.”

Seungkwan waits for Hansol to laugh at him, to smile in that tense way you do when the drunkard yells at you from the cornerstore, or when crazy Aunt Janine starts talkin’ ‘bout the rapture, or anything like that. But Hansol doesn’t. He nods, solemn and quietly handsome in a way that makes Seungkwan’s skin prickle and heat, and smiles. It’s not a wicked smile, but wicked in the way it makes him feel, deep in his gut. “Okay,” Hansol says. “I got to make sure I survive to buy you another soda.”

Seungkwan laughs, out of relief or something sweeter, he doesn’t know. He laughs and laughs until his stomach hurts so much he’s going to be sick. “Okay,” Seungkwan echoes. He remembers something else important. "Just stay away from the marshes,” he tells Hansol solemnly, because he can make his way through them perfect as a peach, but Hansol won’t be able to recognize the hauntings from the real. _That’s how you end up lost,_ Jeonghan used to warn him, _end up as one o’ those bog mummies you see on the BBC. Or as someone they don’ find at all._

“Will do,” Hansol says quietly, and Seungkwan feels worry claw up his throat until Hansol gives another spring-pink smile, eyes sparkling in a way that might be teasing, but doesn’t make Seungkwan feel bad, or crazy, or like the drunkard from the cornerstore. 

He leaves, every few feet turning to look back at Seungkwan until he’s so far he can’t make out his figure. Seungkwan leans back, hands grasping at the mud-covered fishing pole and long hair tangled in the twigs, and tries to lull himself back to half-sleep.

 _Who are you, Hansol?_ He thinks, before the press of the sun and comfort of the earth pulls him under.

 _Who are you?_ He wonders, when he finds another pile of locusts stacked on the rocking chair out back on the porch, their small bodies shrivelling in Georgia sun’s midday grip. 

That night, He blacks out and wakes up standing naked in the tobacco fields again, his arms covered with sharpie runes and charcoal soot and _hosanna hosanna hosanna_ written in his own blood. 

His question is answered. _His name is Vernon,_ God tells him. _The fork in the road and the only thing that can save this poor town from burning._

Seungkwan sighs, prays _deliver me_ to the sharp splinter of sunlight high in the sky, and makes the trek back home to Jeonghan’s fretting arms from who knows where.


	3. im not really a waitress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seungkwan tells his friends about the boy he found (who found him) in the woods. Hoshi doesn't get it and Dokyeom is in love. It's all real good, the small town sleepy kinda normal, but something doesn't feel right.
> 
> It's probably his imagination.

“--and then I woke up in the fields,” Seungkwan finishes, waving his iced americano in the air with enough flourish that it spills over the rim.

Dokyeom stares at him, unblinking with his mouth open wide as a catfish in the way he only gets when he’s struck utterly dumb. Hoshi, enraptured by some new pretty little thing named Lee Jiwon _(Jihoon_ , Hoshi rebukes, _I’ve told you his name seven times Seungkwan, christ on a bike you’re thick--)_ doesn’t look up from his phone, obviously and pathetically _(hey,_ Hoshi starts on him when he says as much) waiting for a text back.

“So you’re telling me,” Dokyeom says, all slow like he does when he wants Seungkwan to know he’s judging him real hard. “That you met some kid in the woods, headed to old mister Chwe’s manor down in the thickets--”

“Not a kid,” Seungkwan interrupts. “A real handsome city boy,” he grins sharp around the chewed up green straw in his mouth. “Taller than you and twice as sweet.”

Hoshi rolls his eyes so far back in his head Seungkwan thinks he might be able to see the pit where his brain’s supposed to be, and keeps _clack clack clackin_ on his nokia keyboard so obnoxiously it must be on purpose.

“I can’t believe this,” Dokyeom cries, so loud that old Mrs. Lawson and her book club turn to give them all a look so poisonous Seungkwan can’t believe they all don’t keel over on the spot. “One pretty boy comes along and bats his eyelashes at you in a swamp--”

“As a matter of fact,” Seungkwan corrects. “We were by the river. I warned him _away_ from the swamp.”

“And you forget all about us,” Dokyeom continues, unconcerned. “Shame on you,” he sighs-- eyes all big and crocodile-teary, the same look he pastes on when the three of them get into trouble and Jeonghan or Dokyeom’s mama is staring them down all thundery.

“Have you thought,” Hoshi asks, and it’s the first time he’s added anything to this conversation since all three of them sat down in that red leather booth. “That maybe your dream had nothing to do with prophecy.” His expression is keen, eyes flickering like lightning bugs under the fluorescent light. “Sounds to me like someone caught your eye for the first time in a long while, and your mind played tricks filling in the rest.”

The cup of ice coffee in Seungkwan’s hand sweats. Some taste--in between mouth and throat--sours. It’s a point of contention for the two of them, has been since grade school and probably will be till they’re withered old men. 

He doesn’t live out in the boonies, like Seungkwan and Dokyeom, and doesn’t get it. The religion thing. The angels with fangs and pangs of hunger thing. The superstitions to protect you from whatever creature lives in the brambles thing. _A whole crock of shit,_ he once said. Hoshi lives in town right upstairs from _Rita’s,_ the very diner they’re sitting in, and helps his parents run it.

Well, technically it’s not called _Rita’s_ anymore. When Hoshi’s daddy remarried, his second wife didn’t take kindly to running a restaurant named after her man’s old flame, and she rechristened it _Lord’s Table._

Everyone still calls it _Rita’s,_ though. 

Everyone around here is all too steeped in habit. And no one around here particularly likes the born-again-baptist matron of the restaurant, Hoshi especially. He always laughs under his breath whenever his stepmother turns breathless, furious crimson at hearing one of the regulars call the place _Rita’s._

Seungkwan purses his mouth and lifts his gaze to meet Hoshi’s, “I know what I saw.” Hoshi breaks away first, looking down at the straw wrapper he’s fiddling with in what Seungkwan knows is silent, sheepish apology. Hoshi doesn’t get it, but they also have an understanding, after all these years. Seungkwan lets him have his doubts, because when it comes down to it, Hoshi loves him enough to go to blows, in fact, he has. 

_(I’m the only one allowed to make fun of you,_ Hoshi had said, tongue in cheek but righteous as all hell, tipping his head to the heavens to staunch the rush of blood from his nose. Seungkwan smiles despite the pain that shoots from his black eye. In that moment he was so, unbearably fond.)

Hoshi opens his mouth to say something, but is interrupted by a familiar figure sidling up to their table. It’s Cara, pretty as a bluebird and cool as an ice chip, but then again she always is.

“Hi Cara,” Dokyeom says, mouth slack and eyes starry. Seungkwan looks straight ahead at Hoshi, who seems to be stifling laughter under his hand. _I know,_ Seungkwan tries to impart with a dramatic raise of the eyebrows, _can you believe him._

“Hey DK,” she says, doing her best to untie the tight knot at the back of her apron. “How’re you boys doing?” 

Dokyeom drums his fingers across the linoleum of the table, “Great!” He says, two octaves higher than normal. Seungkwan rubs his temples, _this is hard to watch._ “Great,” Dokyeom says again, this time some semblance of normal, but more than a little soft. “I hope you’re doin’ well too, Cara.” He sounds so earnest that something fuzzy coils up in Seungkwan’s chest, right next to the second-hand embarrassment. 

“You’re so sweet,” she laughs, flipping a thick curtain of precisely-done braids over one shoulder. Dokyeom looks like he’s about to pass out. Her dark eyes look to Hoshi, sitting next to Dokyeom by the window, “I came to tell you that your folks are asking for you, Hosh,” she says, finally managing to undo her black apron and letting it fall to her sides. “Jeonghan’s getting off a double in just a minute and they need you to cover the back section.”

Hoshi groans, loud and long-suffering, but takes her server notepad without too much complaint, shoving it in his jacket pocket and curling up sulky in the booth.

“You’re on in five,” she tells him, gracefully ignoring Hoshi grumble under his breath. She turns to Seungkwan, slender brown hands resting lightly on her hips, nails painted the shining red of aged Chianti, of drying blood. “Let me get you another americano for the road, honey,” she says, all fig sweet. “On the house.” He can feel Dokyeom stiffen across from him before he can even see it.

“I love you,” he coos to Cara, mostly because he does, she’s always been so nice to him since he was only a knee-high mess of a child, but also because it’ll get on Dokyeom’s nerves. It works, and it’s so funny it’s worth the kick Dokyeom deals him from under the table.

“And you’re alright,” she says with a wink. As soon as she makes her way back to the counter, Dokyeom sighs, deep and heavy, and slams his head down on the table hard enough to make Seungkwan wince.

“I really wouldn’t put your head down on that table,” Seungkwan tells him. “Hoshi was on closing last night.” He ducks, just narrowly avoiding the blow Hoshi deals to his shoulder, laughing while he does.

“She still thinks of me as a kid,” Dokyeom wails in the direction of the floor. Seungkwan opens his mouth to reassure him, something like _hang in there!_ or _you still got a chance!_ but closes it. Dokyeom’s not wrong.

Hoshi is the one who says what they’re both thinking. “Pal, she’s like,” he stops to think, lightly tapping on his fingers to count. “Around twenty-five. I think.”

“She used to babysit you,” Seungkwan adds. “You might be closing on eighteen now, but I don’t think she’ll ever forget spreading calamine on your ass after you fell in that poison ivy.”

 _“It was my lower back,”_ Dokyeom hisses. Hoshi snorts so hard he starts coughing. Dokyeom crosses his arms over his chest, eyes closing and mouth tilting in a small smile. “She smells like raspberries,” he laments, and if he were a puppy Seungkwan would be watching his ears droop.

“You’re such a weirdo,” Hoshi says after he recovers, red-faced and watery-eyed.

Dokyeom swings an arm around Hoshi’s neck, squeezing in the play rendition of a headlock. “I’m just _in love--_ ” he crows, but he snaps his mouth shut when he sees Cara making her way back to their booth, iced americano and dog-tired Jeonghan in tow.

“Here you go, sweetheart,” she says absently, setting the coffee down in front of Seungkwan with practiced grace. Seungkwan is curious at the sudden, subtle change in demeanor, but was raised well enough to hold his tongue and say _thank you ma’am_ like his mama taught him. Something quiet, instinctual, tells him that right now, it’s best not to ask.

“Let’s go, Seungkwan,” Jeonghan says quietly. He's usually tired at the end of a double shift, blond flyaways sticking out of the tight ponytail he wears for work, limbs heavy and sleep coming quick, but today he looks like hell warmed over. There are smears of dark purple staining the bags under his eyes, and his face is pale-- ashen in the way he only gets when he’s caught some cold or spring flu.

Usually they bicker as they’re about to leave, Seungkwan leaning on his hands saying _we know everyone’s coming to see my pretty face, so how about we go fifty-fifty on your tips today._ Jeonghan will say something like _the only reason they stare is ‘cause they think you should be in the zoo._

Sometimes, joking about the way people look at Seungkwan takes the weight of it off, takes the lid off the coke bottle and lets the pressure out. 

But today Seungkwan doesn’t say anything, just grabs his coffee and stands behind Jeonghan, one hand lightly grasping his elbow. Sometimes Jeonghan gets into one of his moods, but usually there’s some sort of forewarning, missed breakfast or fitful sleep, and he seemed fine just this morning.

It’s unnerving, but not all together unusual, so he starts making his way to the door-- sweeping his hand behind his brother’s back in unspoken comfort. Before he can make his way out the door and into Jeonghan’s old beater of a car, he hears Cara say something to Jeonghan and he turns around.

“Don’t forget what we talked about,” she murmurs softly, hand wrapped tight around Jeonghan’s elbow like she grabbed him before he could book it. Jeonghan nods once sharply, jaw tight and shoulders stiff. 

_What was that,_ he mouths to Dokyeom and Hoshi, still seated at the booth, watching the entire affair. Hoshi mouths something back. Seungkwan is terrible at reading his lips because Hoshi always opens his mouth too wide when they do this, but Seungkwan would reckon he said something along the lines of _I don’t fucking know._ Dokyeom just shrugs.

Cara turns back to the two of them, smile back on her face like it never left. “Hoshi, you’re on the clock.” She looks at Dokyeom, who immediately straightens up in his seat. “Call your brother. I’m not going to be able to drive you home today, and I don’t want your Mama calling the restaurant again in a panic when you come back late.” In response to this, Dokyeom flushes furiously, and makes his way to the cord phone sitting next to the register.

Jeonghan slings one willow arm around Seungkwan’s shoulders, and in a display of rare tenderness, leans over to kiss him with a smack on the temple. Jeonghan only plants one on him when he’s drunk or feeling sentimental, and Seungkwan smiles quizzically at the strangeness of it but doesn’t say anything.

_Afterall, we all have hard days. Strange days. Heavy, black dirt and bitter liquor days._

Seungkwan knows this better than anyone. Together, side by side, they make their way into the damp July night, fat moon hanging low and somber over the sorghum grass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you're curious about the chapter title, it's the name of the nail polish cara is wearing-- my favorite, because im corny like that. it may also mean... other things. youll see.


	4. the coyote only has to be lucky once

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are some people who are good at healing. Not out of desire for growth, but out of pure, desperate practice in spreading scar tissue over the weeping wound. 
> 
> Jeonghan's like that, Seungkwan thinks. Which means Seungkwan can't trust him when he tries to hide Seungkwan away from the worst of the world.

It’s completely dark by the time the two of them set out to the parking lot behind the diner, dusk swallowing their little swathe of road whole. The white pines heave and shudder in the wind-- the wilds are breathing all like a living, heart-beating creature. A creature Seungkwan knows they are.

Jeonghan still has an arm wrapped around his shoulder, the two of them walking side by side, Seungkwan tucked against him, in the fashion they’ve been going from place to place for the entirety of their lives. Seungkwan opens his mouth to say something, because while Jeonghan is always... _strange,_ this behavior passes the kind of strange Seungkwan is used to. The first arching syllable of a question comes out of his mouth before Jeonghan shakes his head sharply, ponytail swishing back and forth in the shaking of the wind.

 _Not right now,_ is what Jeonghan is telling him. _Not while we’re outside._

Seungkwan closes his mouth. You don’t spill secrets in night air, not in the damp press of summer and _especially_ not next to the woods. Jeonghan says it’s because in a small town like this one, you never know who’s listening. Seungkwan thinks it’s more than that. Secrets spill into the red dirt and get trapped there, stuck sticky and tight in the clay, and come back to bite you. 

At the very back of the empty parking lot lies the rusted red pickup Jeonghan inherited from Pop, and Seungkwan heaves himself into the passenger side as Jeonghan jumps into the driver’s seat with much less effort. Jeonghan says that he hasn’t grown into his bones yet. That no one at seventeen knows how to move through the world without tripping over yourself. Seungkwan thinks Jeonghan just has a grace about him that most people don’t.

“Good God,” Jeonghan finally says, pulling a pack of cigarettes from the glove compartment. Djarum black cherry, Seungkwan notes. Jeonghan’s favorite when they can afford it, “What a fuckin’ day.”

Jeonghan places it between his lips, rifles through the glove compartment furiously with one pale, blue-shadowed hand. “I know I put it--” 

Seungkwan sighs, loudly, and pulls the cheap lighter out of his pocket, flicking the flame twice to get Jeonghan’s attention. He doesn’t smoke, but Jeonghan loses lighters like wishes, and it’s the least he can do to carry one around, he thinks.

Jeonghan leans in to the lighter Seungkwan holds out to him, hands cupped around his cigarette the same way he did when they told each other secrets when they were children. The light makes the shadows resting in the curves of his cheeks and nose flicker, makes him look like some wild, demon thing. Seungkwan shivers, even though the night isn’t cold. “What’s going on with you?”

Jeonghan leans back in the busted old seat, scrutinizing him out of the corner of his narrowed cat-eyes. The only light comes from the end of his cigarette and the round, yellow moon in the sky-- the smell of dirty cloves, heady tobacco and red cherries ripe as a still beating heart saturates the cab of the truck, suffocating but warmly familiar.

The second-hand buzz and the small comfort of a scent he associates with only his brother lulls Seungkwan into leaning back in his seat. He closes his eyes, “Don’t lie to me. I saw you and Cara having words." Jeonghan turns the key in the ignition, it takes three tries before the truck rumbles to life, blinking headlights open. "It looked something awful serious.”

Jeonghan takes a deep breath, but it might just be to inhale more of the smoke. Seungkwan can’t tell. “You don’t need to worry about it, Kwannie.” Jeonghan’s hair-- half undone by now, is ruffled by the wind coming through the crack of the window that never rolls up right. Jeonghan never bothered to fix it. _It’s not like we have anything worth stealing,_ he had said.

He backs up onto the main road, and once he flicks his high beams on Jeonghan starts fiddling with the radio-- flipping through different frequencies of buzzing static till he settles on a smoky rendition of _Sky is Crying_ by Etta James. The syrup siren call of that voice mixes with the black cherry smoke, sets Seungkwan’s teeth on edge. This too, is unlike Jeonghan. Jeonghan likes pop country-- pretty young things with bright white veneers singing about kissing their honeys and havin’ a real good time this Saturday night. Jeonghan says the world is already sad, _a little levity never hurt nobody, Seungkwan._

Seungkwan likes blues _because_ it’s heavy. It pins him back down to the dirt on earth when he feels like his mind might float away.

“But I do! I worry,” Seungkwan says. It comes out a little as a wheeze, and he rolls down the passenger side window to let in the damp, dark air. “I worry about you,” Seungkwan repeats. “All the time.”

A shadow shifts in the corner of his eyes, trailing the truck from outside the window. This happens sometimes. Seungkwan ignores it, do _n’t look them in the eye and you’ll be fine,_ he tells himself. Jeonghan doesn’t see them, no one else ever does. He just sits there, thin brows drawn and puffing furiously on his cig.

The only voice between them is Etta's. _I got a bad feeling,_ she croons. Half-pack-a-day rough but lovelier than water lilies. _I got a bad feeling--_

“You only listen to blues when you’re mad,” Seungkwan says quietly. “Did I do something?”

This seems to surprise him, eyes jumping from the narrow dirt road in front of him to rest on Seungkwan’s face, “God no!” 

“No, Seungkwan,” he sighs, flicking his eyes back to the road before putting them a back on Seungkwan. He doesn’t see the long-limbed night-things, but Jeonghan has always been a careful driver anyways. “You--” 

_You know the sky's been crying,_ Etta says, blues-heavy the way Seungkwan felt after he saw God for the first time. _Can see you see the tears roll down my door--_

Jeonghan twists the dial and turns the volume down to a whisper. “You didn’t do anything at all,” his voice is soft, the same timbre it smooths into whenever he catches Seungkwan singing in the garden, or when the stray cats that come ‘round let him scratch them under their chins.

He groans like he does when Seungkwan finally manages to wear him down. “Now don’t go flapping at the gums to Soonyoung and Seokmin about this, you hear?” He only uses their real names when he means business. Seungkwan nods solemnly, internally crowing at the victory. “But Cara-- Cara’s in a little bit a trouble.”

The delicious satisfaction of prying something out of a regular brick wall like Jeonghan immediately dies, festering into something that tastes like bile and sits at the bottom of his guts.

He swallows, mouth cotton dry and tongue ungainly in his mouth. “What do you mean, trouble?” His fists clench in his lap, suddenly irrationally furious, “Cara wouldn’t do _nothing_ to hurt _nobody--”_

 _“I know,”_ It’s louder than Jeonghan means to be, if the way he snaps his mouth after means anything. “I know,” he says again, this time more subdued.

“I asked her to keep an eye on some pe-- things for me,” he says, low and heavy just like the clove cigarettes he smokes. “There’s been a lot of talk in town lately about the sickness--”

 _“Jeonghan,”_ he warns. Their Mama’s passing never sat well with Jeonghan, in a way that goes beyond grief. It was a hard summer, those years ago, so hot and wet you stepped outside and smelled the decay in the air. A lot of people got sick that year. A lot never recovered. Mama was one of them. It’s as simple as that, he tells himself. _Simple as that._ “You can’t keep doing this. It was her time.”

He doesn’t know a lot about the dead. After all, he only receives prophecy of the dying. 

_(I’m not allowed to tell you where she went,_ Minghao had told him. _There are rules. Plans. Ones even I can’t fathom. But I pulled in a favor from Azrael and she said your mother was well. That she was thinking of you both as she went. That she loves you._ Seungkwan had cried so hard he slept for a day straight.)

“Even so!” The pale light from the moon shifts, revealing the white-knuckled grip Jeonghan has on the steering wheel. “Something wasn’t right about it.”

Jeonghan’s gaze falters as he catches the hardest look Seungkwan can bear to give him. His eyes flicker to the rear-view mirror. “I asked Cara to keep an ear to the ground. You know she’s got her way with things like that.”

She does. Cara’s got that sixth sense. She always knows when Hoshi pockets his tips, even though she never tells on him. She always knows when DK doesn’t want to go home and lets him stay past closing. Sometimes she knows the names of travelers before they even sit down. It’s a strange gift so familiar Seungkwan had never bothered to question it.

The sun rises in the east. Seungkwan’s tongue belongs not to him, but the almighty. Cara knows things. That's how things are. “She learn anything?”

“No,” his eyes still flicker to the rear-view mirror. Seungkwan narrows his eyes at the shadows pooling in the planes of his face. He’s known Jeonghan all his life, but when he wants to be, he’s a book in a language Seungkwan doesn’t know. “Well,” Jeonghan amends. “You know the old mayor? Mister Chwe? You probably don’t remember, he and his family left for New York City when you were just a tiny thing.” Jeonghan says _New York City_ in the same amused drawl he says _Atlantis_ or _Cinderella's Castle_ or any other place outside of here that seems like it couldn't possibly exist.

Seungkwan in fact does remember, but only vaguely. A fuzzy outline of a smiling woman with cornsilk curls. Her belly round with child, a man’s hand on it. There was _someone else--_

“His son’s back in town,” Jeonghan says, and something in Seungkwan’s mind almost clicks, a feeling of maybe once knowing someone. “A boy your age. Chwe Hansol.”

 _Him,_ Seungkwan startles, twisting his fingers through the rips in his jeans around the kneecaps. _The boy by the river,_ Seungkwan abandons the mystery of someone’s son he may have once known. _Chwe Hansol,_ he wants to tell Jeonghan, _he knows. I know him and he’s so handsome, Jeonghan,_ he wants to say.

It’s good that he doesn’t get the chance to. The next words that come marching out of Jeonghan’s mouth are, “I don’t want you near him. Not in the same breath of wind.”

“Are you serious?” An airy laugh bubbles up Seungkwan’s throat and out his mouth. Jeonghan doesn’t smile. “Oh,” Seungkwan notes curiously. “Oh my god, you really are. Why?” It seems ridiculous, that Jeonghan-- Jeonghan with a thousand things on his plate and barely a breath to spare, would give half a rat’s ass about any particular newcomer. _Even if he is pretty,_ he mind adds traitorously. “Seriously,” Seungkwan says, still laughing a little under his breath in disbelief. “What could he have done after being here for a couple days?”

“Seungkwan,” Jeonghan’s voice is serious, but not mean or thunderstorming. He sounds like their mother did, when she admonished him. It overflows a tender cavity in his chest that holds all his aching. “Have I ever made you do something that wasn’t for your own good?”

Seungkwan’s silence is answer enough. He hasn’t. For all his moods and vices and shadows, Jeonghan is a good brother. A good man. Someone who loves him, even when it's hard to. And Seungkwan knows, knows that he's-- he's a lot to deal with.

“I’ve never been perfect,” Jeonghan admits. “Far from it. But listen to me, please.” It’s the closest Seungkwan’s ever heard to begging from him, unfurling a sliver of what Jeonghan doesn’t like to show him; the parts of him that are wet and bloody and tender. “Just this once,” he pleads. “Stay away from that boy.”

He fidgets in his seat. He tries to be good, wants to more than anything, but instead of _yes, Jeonghan,_ the curiosity spills out of him instead. “Does this have to do with the sickness?”

_“Seungkwan.”_

“Okay! Okay I get it” He raises his hands in apology, gasoline-yellow moonlight highlighting the bitten crescents of his nails and slim, calloused fingers. “I’ll keep my distance.” The promise sounds flimsy, even to his ears, but it seems to assure Jeonghan for now. _Afterall,_ some secret, awful, devilish part of him whispers. _He doesn’t know about that day at the river._

Jeonghan doesn’t say _thank you,_ like a normal person. He never does, except when Hoshi’s stepmother gets on his ass about being rude to _our esteemed clientele,_ and even then he can only keep it up for about an hour. But he nods his head hard enough that his crooked, undone ponytail bobs, and when he smiles, it reaches to the crinkles around his eyes.

Jeonghan turns the radio back up, flipping through stations till Seungkwan can make out the dulcet twang of a Carrie Underwood record. That’s when Seungkwan knows that everything will be okay. “Remember,” Jeonghan reminds him, thrumming his finger tips on the wheel in time to the beat. “The fawn has to be lucky everytime he ventures to the wood. But the coyote--”

 _“--only has to be lucky once,”_ Seungkwan finishes with him. An old adage Jeonghan is fond of, one he seems to chant like a hymn everytime Seungkwan stumbles back home after waking up in the wilds with the word of God still beating in his skull. “I’ll be careful, I always am.”

He rolls his eyes at this, and Seungkwan resents that Jeonghan doesn’t even bother to believe it. “I just want my little deer safe,” Jeonghan coos, as greasily as possible. It’s undermined by the fact that Seungkwan knows he means it, serious as the grave and the bones six feet under. “Seungkwan,” Jeonghan says, smile creeping up his face. “Whose baby are you?”

“Ugh,” Seungkwan groans with the worn-out, honey-sweet embarrassment of it. He still can’t help mumbling, “Jeonghan’s baby.”

“That’s right,” Jeonghan laughs, sitting back relaxed in his seat, one hand tapping his cigarette on the window glass to let the ashes blow away. “You are.”

They spend the rest of the drive home in summer-night quiet, one that he and Jeonghan have practiced for years. They’re loud, and brash, and too much for most people, but something about midnight in July dampens the two of them down, softens the rough edges of them. Pop had said it was too hot for them to muster a ruckus. Mama had said black summer nights eat the noise in you, and that’s what fattens the moon.

Either way, Jeonghan hums along to his radio, and Seungkwan uses the time to take a good long look at him.

Jeonghan has long lashes and sharp features, the ladies at church--back when they still went to church--said he was pretty. But if you look longer the pretty is offset by the simmer under his skin, the river-rock roughness that could never be sanded away.

Jeonghan still carries the scar near his eyebrow, from when he bashed his head open on the table corner at four years old. Seungkwan wasn’t alive yet, not even as a glint in his mama’s eye, when that happened, but he still knows about it, remembers it like he was there. It’s because God was there-- in the trembling of Jeonghan’s small hands, in the copper streak of blood crusting on his face, in the half-frozen bag of carrots stuck to his face, and in that steady healing.

Saint Peter had once said, _but even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed._

Jeonghan has suffered, he knows, suffered a lot. It lives within him like a black river, his worries about money and their parents and the absolute hell Seungkwan gives him just on the virtue of being alive and part howling cosmos of God. 

And yet despite this-- or perhaps because of it, Jeonghan is good at healing. At keeping tender even when parts of him scar. 

Seungkwan never says this aloud, but he can’t understand how suffering can be a blessing, not when he’s seen what it’s done. He can’t understand how his god can call Jeonghan’s healing a gift, when all it ever means is that he knows hurt. But that’s Jeonghan, as much molded by the dark as he is the light. The patron saint of waking up tomorrow, that’s Jeonghan as Seungkwan knows him. 

Older and beautiful and terrible not in the way of angels but of mortal men, feet that have walked too far and sharp-tooth laughter in the face of awful times.

Seungkwan glances away, faces the road in front of them and doesn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dino, baby, im so sorry i stole nugu aegi from you
> 
> i justify it to myself by telling myself that if seungkwan was five years younger (as he is in this au) jeonghan would pull out the big guns whenever he wanted

**Author's Note:**

> my first seventeen fic!!
> 
> plz tell me what you think in the comments! or on twt @sidstarbursts


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